About me

My name is Mike Lockwood, and I'm now a full-time optician. I have my
own company, Lockwood Custom Optics, that I operate myself.

From 2000 to early 2009 I was a research engineer at the Beckman
Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My
engineering work is in the field of signal processing, specifically
acoustic signal processing and beamforming algorithms. I received
a
Masters degree in elecrical engineering from UIUC in 1999.

With my business picking up and research funding temporarily absent, I
decided to make the transition to full-time optical work in May of
2009, and I very much enjoy being my own boss.

I enjoy telescope making,
observing the wonders of the night sky, golf, photography (daytime and nighttime) woodworking, metalworking,
and ballroom,
latin and nightclub dancing. I've been involved with the Dancing Illini
at the University of Illinois. I also enjoy building useful
things for
my house or others, improving my house, writing articles about optics
and other amateur astronomers, riding roller coasters, outdoor
activities, waterskiing, wakeboarding, good beer, good friends, good
audio systems, good
music, good food, and most combinations of those things.

If you want to know more than that, you'll have to take the drastic
step
of meeting me in person, like they used to do in the olden days when
people
talked to each other instead of typing/texting to each other.